New year, new me – how to use language and technology for the benefit of your business in 2019

Living and working in a global economy sets the bar high for any business – it’s important to follow the trends but, maybe even more importantly – to adapt them to your industry, target group and location. The good news is that you already use one of the best tools to do it – multilingual communication. What you should focus on more is to discover the full potential of language services and remember that they reach far beyond mere translation.

Find out how to use the tools you already have at your disposal – language and technology – to improve the 2018 version of your business.

Open to digital experience

Although language entered the digital era quite a few years ago, a lot has changed since then. API protocols are in constant use to connect clients’ CRMs, CMSs and other business platforms with translation engines. The once poor quality machine translation has become neural machine translation based on artificial intelligence with unlimited learning potential. Language service providers issue their own cryptocurrency and translation software becomes the translator’s best friend.

Something that somehow defines humanity – language – is now not only being learned by computers, but is also being improved by them.

A professional translator requires now a certain level of tech-savviness and an open mind to share some of the work with computer engines. We know, though, that most of clients have trust issues when it comes to confiding in machines with their translations. It’s understandable when you think about low-quality Google translations from a few years ago. But even a short conversation with a language service provider would make it clear that technology should be something to embrace, not fear.

Legal documents, financial statements and marketing materials call for the highest possible translation quality. It needs to be done or at least proofread by a human translator because of the nature and purpose of such documents. On the other hand, every business generates a lot of content of smaller significance or other documents that are for internal use only. They can be easily translated by software.

What is more, even previously mentioned types of content (legal, marketing, etc.) can benefit from the translation software development. Creating translation memory and using CAT tools decreases the costs of translation significantly while increasing its accuracy and consistency. It allows you to manage multilingual content creation and distribution in more than one channel at a time. You fully control the terminology used in your documents and receive a high-quality, accurate translation that’s entirely coherent with your brand’s voice and image. Channeling some translation work through computer’s engines would enormously benefit your business’ efficiency.

Give the robot a human touch

In 2018, chatbots grew to be an inseparable part of marketing and customer service, and we can tell you – they’re not going anywhere in 2019.

The AI-based real-time technology is a great solution for any company that receives a great number of inquiries through platforms like Facebook or corporate websites. Chatbots make it easy for customers to buy products or book services. There are already 1.4 billion people using chatbots every year, and as many as 80% of the companies that participated in Oracle’s research say that they already use chatbots or plan to use them by 2020.

Current chatbots provide a nearly human experience which is part of their undeniable popularity. But, as most people prefer online shopping in their native language, you should teach your chatbots to speak that language. Making your robots multilingual is crucial for efficient automation of your communication strategy – introducing chatbots that answer in 10 most common languages in the world gives you access to 3 billion users worldwide!

Let them hear your voice

The market of voice-controlled devices grows every day. As many as 40% of adults already use voice search at least once a day ,and by 2020 – 50% of all searches will be voice-controlled.

Conclusions? Let people hear the voice of your brand! If you’re investing in voice or video marketing like multimedia content, video tutorials or educational podcasts, make sure that they are fully localized and fit the international markets’ requirements. Not many people actually expect voice talents to be on a language agency’s payroll, but they couldn’t be more wrong. Multilingual voice-overs are one of the standard services in a professional localization company.

What if the voice-based multimedia are not part of your marketing strategy? Well, at least make sure that your website content is voice search friendly.

It’s extremely important to localize or transcreate the content into local languages. Focus on keywords and long tail phrases that are NOT to be translated but localized. Make sure that the content on your website makes it easy for search robots to “read” it. Remember that voice search is based on natural language – we use different wording when speaking than when typing. A professional localization agency should have native resources on hand – it’s extremely important to work with native speakers, as you should anticipate questions in a natural, “conversational” way rather than how we usually type in queries.

Content marketing still matters

Content is still king, but a one with multiple personalities. Video, text, images, voice — all should be localized and adapted to the needs of multilingual markets. 2019 is high time you introduce your brand to multilingual communication based on technology, and rethink the language’s role in a tech-savvy world.

EN 15038 is the first quality standard developed exclusively for the translation industry. The standard defines the requirements for the provision of translation services, setting and aligning standards applicable to the procedures relating to translation and reviewing translated texts, recruitment and competence of translators, relations with the client, additional services, etc.

EN 15038 defines the criteria for the provision of high quality services by providers of translation services and related ones. This applies not only to the translation process, but also all other aspects of the service, i.e.:

• assurance of high quality of translation through reviewing it by another translator (the four eyes principle),
• text edition,
• standardization and automation of terminology and TM database management,
• IT systems and CAT tools,
• data archiving and project management.

ISO 9001:2008 Quality Certification

ISO 9001:2008 is an international standard that specifies requirements to be fulfilled by a quality management system in the organization.

It is an international standard that specifies requirements to be fulfilled by the company’s quality management system with respect to production or services rendered by that company. The standard sets out the principles of regular supervision over the various activities and processes implemented in any organization by following the procedures designed to audit documentation, resource management, as well as regular assessment of customer satisfaction and service quality.